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THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF HYGIENE,
432 an agency. He then states that the sanitary inspectors who, he had hoped, were the officials by whom the work was to be performed, and who were the nucleus of the sanitary department which he desired to see established in the city, have been dismissed. A real sanitary department in Calcutta has heretofore only existed in name, and now it appears that the sanitary organisation for carrying out inspections, which the most insignificant village in England possesses, is lacking for this great eastern capital, with its terrible death-rate
from preventable causes. Had there been no inspection of the special surroundings of the dairy and other premises which led to the discovery that in the case of theA>’denclutha those who were attacked with cholera had used the implicated milk, that outbreak, like others in Calcutta, would ,probably have gone to swell the list of cholera cases due to so-called climatic causes. ___
THE EPIDEMIC OF ENTERIC FEVER AT MOUNTAIN ASH. THE severe outbreak of enteric fever at Mountain Ash is -said to be extending and to call for unceasing labour on the .part of the medical practitioners of the district. Up to the end of last week HO attacks had occurred, and a period has now arrived when the deaths have commenced, five fatal attacks being recorded. Happily, there is reason to believe that the cause of the extension of the epidemic has been discovered. The outbreak has been almost exclusively connned to a suburb of Mountain Ash known as Miskin, and there it has been found that the choking of a branch sewer had led to a large block in the sewerage system, with the ,result of forcing back upon the houses the fetid emanations arising from the decomposing sewage. This block has been .dealt with; and we may hope that the sanitary circumstances of the place are such that, the initial cause once removed, the further spread of the disease will be checked.
FOREIGN UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE.
Berlin.-Professor Hertwig will commence his lectures as Second Professor of Anatomy in October. Dr. Schmaltz has been appointed to the second Professorship of Anatomy in the Veterinary School. J6K6C.—Dr. F. Semon has qualified as docent in Anatomy. - e/.—It is reported that a Hygienic Institute and a Professorship of Hygiene are to be established. THE Vienna
Academy of Sciences have elected Dr. Leopold
’Pfanndler, Professor of Physics at lnnsbruck, and Dr. Hubert ’Seitgeb, Professor of Botany at Gratz, Members; Dr. Karl Toldt, Professor of Anatomy at Vienna, Dr. Sigmund von
Wroblewsky, Professor of Physics at Cracow, Dr. Ernest Fleischi von Marxon, Professor of Physiology in Vienna, Home Corresponding Members; and Professor H. E. Beyrich of Berlin, Foreign Corresponding Member. our readers will be glad to learn, is and energy at St. Gilgen, by the health steadily regaining pleasant waters of the Wolfgang-See. He hopes to resume is prelections with the reopening of the winter session.
DR. BILLROTH,
THE Crown Prince of Germany has written to Professor Virchow, announcing a continued improvement, and thanking the renowned pathologist for his investigations into the character of his Imperial Highness’s malady.
DR. EDMUND XBUSSER, assistant in Professor Medical Clinic in Vienna, has been appointed sician to Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
Bamberger’s Body Phy-
THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF HYGIENE,
VIENNA, famous historically as a seat of Congress, will four weeks hence give hospitality to the greatest numerically i
as well as philanthropically that has yet assembled within her walls. To the invitations issued by the Organising Committee of the International Congress of Hygiene 1320 affirmative replies have been received. The ordinary members will be numerous enough to suggest the thought that the gathering is as much an ethnographic as a hygienic one. Austria contributes 788, Hungary 182, Germany 85, France 63, Belgium and Italy 24 each, Russia 19, Switzerland 13, England 12, Holland 9, Denmark 8, Roumania 5, North America 5, Spain and Egypt 3 each, South America 2, and Portugal, Bulgaria, and Turkey 1 each. The official representation is also considerable. The common Ministries of Vienna and Buda-Pest depute 15 delegates ; the Austrian Government 12, the Hungarian 18, the French 10, the Belgian and Swiss 4 each ; the German kingdom, the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Spanish, the Netherlands, and the Egyptian, 2 each ; the Italian, the Danish, the Portuguese, and the Norwegian kingdoms, 1 each ; Brunswick, Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen, Roumania, Servia, Persia, and the Argentine Re public also 1 each. The proceedings will relegate to the second line all purely controversial themes of hygienic science, and deal mainly with the thoroughly practical questions of human well-being. Of the twenty books and brochures distributed by the Hygienic Section among the members of the Congress, some of them ranging from 100 to 150 pages (the Demographic Section has limited itself to two brochures of a few pages each), the subjects dealt with are-Water in all its aspects as a Necessary of Life, including Drainage, and the preservation of Rivers from Pollution; the Utilisation of Human Refuse ; the Adulteration of Food ; Alcoholism; the Hygiene of Schools, of Seafaring Vessels, and Factories; the erection of Isolation Hospitals; the Protection of Animals from Epidemic Disease by Inoculation; the Etiology and Prophylaxis of Cholera, considered with reference to the recent European visitations-the whole field, in short, of sanitary science in its rigidly practical bearings. The special sections, as well as the general meetings, will assemble in the new university buildings. Within the same walls has been brought together, chiefly through donations, a splendid hygienic and demographic library, which, after the close of the Congress, will become the property partly of the University Institute for Hygiene, partly of the Central Statistical Commission. In connexion with the library there is also a magnificent assortment of plans and graphic representations of what may be called the matél’iel of sanitary and demographic science. The residue of the money subscribed for the Congress will be devoted to a foundation for the promotion ofiabriks-hygiene"—to remain as a monument of the Congress long after its immediate programme has been fulfilled. Demography, we may mention, will be represented at the Congress for the last time on this occasion, its votaries having made special arrangements with the newly organised Statistical Institute for enrolment among its members. The organising committee, as already remarked, has now issued in printed form the opening address, dealing with the twenty-two subjects set down for discussion. These in themselves constitute a formidable volume, and will enable all the members of the Congress to obtain a complete insight of each subject that is to be debated. The greater number of papers are in German, but these, for the most part, are accompanied with summaries of the main argument written in French. After German, second in number are the discourses in French, and finally there are four papers in English. The first is a report on the Purification and Utilisation of Sewage, by Dr. E. Frankland of New Reigate; the second is a short Report on the Importation of Rags, by Professor Corfield ; the third is an account of the Liws relatingto Factories and’Workshops, by Mr. F. Hayes-lVhymper; and the fourth is a paper on International Regulations tor preventing Epidemics, by Mr. Shirley F. Murphy. This latter may probably lead to a somewhat stormy debate, as it will be remembered that English ideas on quarantineA were left in a minority of two at the last Congress, held three years ago at the Hague. Among the French papers, M. Durand-Claye’s summing up of the Shone and Waring
433 solid form what up to that moment has been present only as a gas; and it is not surprising, therefore, that manymost, indeed-of the engines that have been constructed for this purpose have been liable to clog through accumulations of ice and snow. The deposition of water as a result of increased tension in water vapour. though theoretically correlative to the deposition through reduction of temperature, does not. indeed, give rise to any practical difficulty. Indeed, in practice it is somewhat in favour of the operation, for as a matter of experience great reduction of temperature is almost always accompanied by simultaneous reduction of pressure. Thus the one condition tends to promote evaporation, while THE FROZEN MEAT SUPPLY. the other is producing condensation. But it falls far short of effecting a complete compensation. Our readers will, THE enormous importance of everything which has a remember the beautiful experiment of Cailletet, alluded to. bearing upon the food supply of Great Britain gives a very above, in which hydrogen gas, after being subjected to an special interest to much of the evidence which was tendered enormous pressure and to the refrigerating influence of to Mr. Justice Stephen in the course of the long patent trial freely evaporating carbonic acid, was allowed to stream a cock into the open air. It might have been supwith which he brought his judicial labours to a close for through a priori that the relaxation of pressure, which itself posed the legal year now just ended. The subject matter of the produced the cold, would have countervailed the condensing patent in question is a refrigerating machine, and interesting effect of the cold so produced. But it was not so. In the as its theory may be as a branch of thermo-dynamics, it centre of his emergent jet of liberated gas little lumps of would have bean little but a piece of laboratory apparatus solid hydrogen formed and fell upon the floor. In the same of ice form in the expanding water vapourbut for one thing. It has been found applicable to the im- way grains when the reduction of pressure is considerable, and theseportant purpose of bringing dead meat from America, grains of ice, accumulating in the working parts of Australia, and New Zealand in a perfectly sound condition. the machine, have of course a strong tendency to block it The trade is at present in its infancy. Ten years ago, up. How strong this tendency is may be collected from thealthough experiments had been made with a view to evidence of one of the engineers, who told Mr. Justice the importation of cargoes of dead meat, they had all Stephen that "cold air machines are frequently made to deliver 1,680,000 feet per day, and this would produce about met with very indifferent success. The trouble arose out 5 cwt. of snow equal to three cubic yards in twenty-four of a very trifling circumstance. Air contains, as every- hours without taking into account evaporation from the body knows, a certain proportion of water vapour. This meat, and this on the assumption that the air taken into the is, indeed, rather a popular way of putting the fact. machine is already below freezing." It may well be supIf atmospheric air be considered to be strictly a mechanical posed that the disposal of such a quantity of solid mattermixture of oxygen and nitrogen, then of course it does not generated within the machine would in any case be a serious always and necessarily contain water. But although oxygen problem, but it is complicated by the circumstance that this. and nitrogen are often spoken of as being the principal (and maes of snow comes into existence precisely where it is most sometimes roughly as the only) ingredients ot common air, mischievous. In order to get the full refrigerating effect, it, this is hardly accurate. So long as oxygen and nitrogen is necessary to make the air do work during its expanwere regarded by physicists as " permanent gases," radically sion, and consequently it must be expanded in a closed different from condensable vapour, like steam or carbonic chamber, in a cylinder in fact. This accordingly is wher& acid, it was natural to draw a line between the gaseous and the snow is formed, and the problem of its removal in the vaporous constituents of the atmosphere. But that dis- solid form Imust be faced if once the water vapour gains. tinction holds no longer. The brilliant experiments of admission. Andrews, of Cailletet, of Pictet and others have recently Stated thus, the difficulty conveys a hint as to how it may shown that the most volatile gases are only vapours at a be evaded. All that is wanted in the expansion cylinder is temperature much above, or a pressure greatly below, satu- the permanent gas. If the water vapour can be removed ration point, and in this view it is impossible any longer to the whole difficulty is at an end. Completely to remove it deny to the omnipresent and beneficent water vapour which is not practicable, is not desirable perhaps, for it is probablepaints our sunsets and fertilises our fieldsits right to the that the desiccating action of a truly anhydrous atmosphere position of a constituent of prime importance in the terres- would have a deteriorating effect upon the meat cargo. But trial atmosphere. by the simple expedient of cooling down the entering air,, But prior to 1877 it almost seemed as if this subtle vapour before admitting it to the expansion cylinder, to a temperawould for ever shut Great Britain off from the greatest dead- ture just above 32° F., and giving it time to deposit its conmeat markets of the world. The problem was to preserve densed moisture in a form, the practical difficulty has. liquid the meat during a voyage lasting from two to five weeks, been overcome. The liquid water runs away under tb& and involving, in the case of the southern hemisphere, the action of gravity. The residual vapour, though mere] crossing of the equator. The solution was obvious-viz., still producing snow, produces so much less than if to reduce the temperature of the chamber in which the meat it had gone into the cylinder at an ordinary atmospheric was carried to a point that would arrest putrefaction. Other as to make all the difference between comtemperature raethods of antiseptic treatment had indeed been tried, but not mercial failure and commercial success. Equipped with only without success, they hadnever even offered a reasonable this contrivance, the merchant finds it as eaey to make his. prospect of success. An antiseptic dressing may do no harm way through the circumambient ocean of water vapour as. to living flesh, because the vital processes speedily eliminate to traverse the subjacent ocean of liquid water, and without foreign elements; but once lodged in the substance of dead risk or trouble to bring his inert cargo of perishable meat animal tissue, the antiseptic dressing became itself a ground for a six weeks’ voyage through the tropics. Already the of offence, and one which no subsequent treatment could boon of this great enlargement of his meat supply i wholly or satisfactorily remove. Not so, however, the treat- being felt by the British consumer. Last year it seems ment by what may,perhaps, be termed antiseptictemperature. that a million frozen carcases arrived in London from This demands no counteraction but the subsequent thaw, and New Zealand and the River Plate. In April of the leaves no ineradicable mischief behind it. This, then, was, as present year 131,000 carcases of frozen mutton wera we say, the obvious solution, and for years was only obstructed received. Thus a beginning has been made of what will by the difficulty of dealing in the refrigerator with the in- probably in the end prove to be a most important departure evitable water vapour. Unlike the so-called "permanent in the department of our food supply. gases," water vapour is alwayspresent in the atmosphere, under ordinary conditions, in such quantity as to be actually at its point of saturation. A slight increase of pressure or ACCORDING to advices from Jamaica, brought by the a slight fall of temperature suffices to some precipitate Royal Mail Company’s steamer Orinoco, small-pox has portion of this vapour. Hence the difficulty. The engine entirely disappeared from the island, but several ports cf is required suddenly to accommodate in the liquid or the Cuba are declared to be infected.
systems of drainage is certain to elicit very warm contradictions. Indeed, we already hear of various speakers who are preparing for the fray; and it must be borne in mind that the debates open on September 26th, so there is not much time to be lost. The excursions and various entertainments all seem to have been organised on a very grand scale and with much method, and the number of adherents to the Congress being unprecedentedly large, everything indicates that this gathering will be more successful than any of its predecessors.
from preventable causes. Had there been no inspection of the special surroundings of the dairy and other premises which led to the discovery that in the case of theA>’denclutha those who were attacked with cholera had used the implicated milk, that outbreak, like others in Calcutta, would ,probably have gone to swell the list of cholera cases due to so-called climatic causes. ___
THE EPIDEMIC OF ENTERIC FEVER AT MOUNTAIN ASH. THE severe outbreak of enteric fever at Mountain Ash is -said to be extending and to call for unceasing labour on the .part of the medical practitioners of the district. Up to the end of last week HO attacks had occurred, and a period has now arrived when the deaths have commenced, five fatal attacks being recorded. Happily, there is reason to believe that the cause of the extension of the epidemic has been discovered. The outbreak has been almost exclusively connned to a suburb of Mountain Ash known as Miskin, and there it has been found that the choking of a branch sewer had led to a large block in the sewerage system, with the ,result of forcing back upon the houses the fetid emanations arising from the decomposing sewage. This block has been .dealt with; and we may hope that the sanitary circumstances of the place are such that, the initial cause once removed, the further spread of the disease will be checked.
FOREIGN UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE.
Berlin.-Professor Hertwig will commence his lectures as Second Professor of Anatomy in October. Dr. Schmaltz has been appointed to the second Professorship of Anatomy in the Veterinary School. J6K6C.—Dr. F. Semon has qualified as docent in Anatomy. - e/.—It is reported that a Hygienic Institute and a Professorship of Hygiene are to be established. THE Vienna
Academy of Sciences have elected Dr. Leopold
’Pfanndler, Professor of Physics at lnnsbruck, and Dr. Hubert ’Seitgeb, Professor of Botany at Gratz, Members; Dr. Karl Toldt, Professor of Anatomy at Vienna, Dr. Sigmund von
Wroblewsky, Professor of Physics at Cracow, Dr. Ernest Fleischi von Marxon, Professor of Physiology in Vienna, Home Corresponding Members; and Professor H. E. Beyrich of Berlin, Foreign Corresponding Member. our readers will be glad to learn, is and energy at St. Gilgen, by the health steadily regaining pleasant waters of the Wolfgang-See. He hopes to resume is prelections with the reopening of the winter session.
DR. BILLROTH,
THE Crown Prince of Germany has written to Professor Virchow, announcing a continued improvement, and thanking the renowned pathologist for his investigations into the character of his Imperial Highness’s malady.
DR. EDMUND XBUSSER, assistant in Professor Medical Clinic in Vienna, has been appointed sician to Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
Bamberger’s Body Phy-
THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF HYGIENE,
VIENNA, famous historically as a seat of Congress, will four weeks hence give hospitality to the greatest numerically i
as well as philanthropically that has yet assembled within her walls. To the invitations issued by the Organising Committee of the International Congress of Hygiene 1320 affirmative replies have been received. The ordinary members will be numerous enough to suggest the thought that the gathering is as much an ethnographic as a hygienic one. Austria contributes 788, Hungary 182, Germany 85, France 63, Belgium and Italy 24 each, Russia 19, Switzerland 13, England 12, Holland 9, Denmark 8, Roumania 5, North America 5, Spain and Egypt 3 each, South America 2, and Portugal, Bulgaria, and Turkey 1 each. The official representation is also considerable. The common Ministries of Vienna and Buda-Pest depute 15 delegates ; the Austrian Government 12, the Hungarian 18, the French 10, the Belgian and Swiss 4 each ; the German kingdom, the Bavarian, the Saxon, the Spanish, the Netherlands, and the Egyptian, 2 each ; the Italian, the Danish, the Portuguese, and the Norwegian kingdoms, 1 each ; Brunswick, Hamburg, Lubeck, Bremen, Roumania, Servia, Persia, and the Argentine Re public also 1 each. The proceedings will relegate to the second line all purely controversial themes of hygienic science, and deal mainly with the thoroughly practical questions of human well-being. Of the twenty books and brochures distributed by the Hygienic Section among the members of the Congress, some of them ranging from 100 to 150 pages (the Demographic Section has limited itself to two brochures of a few pages each), the subjects dealt with are-Water in all its aspects as a Necessary of Life, including Drainage, and the preservation of Rivers from Pollution; the Utilisation of Human Refuse ; the Adulteration of Food ; Alcoholism; the Hygiene of Schools, of Seafaring Vessels, and Factories; the erection of Isolation Hospitals; the Protection of Animals from Epidemic Disease by Inoculation; the Etiology and Prophylaxis of Cholera, considered with reference to the recent European visitations-the whole field, in short, of sanitary science in its rigidly practical bearings. The special sections, as well as the general meetings, will assemble in the new university buildings. Within the same walls has been brought together, chiefly through donations, a splendid hygienic and demographic library, which, after the close of the Congress, will become the property partly of the University Institute for Hygiene, partly of the Central Statistical Commission. In connexion with the library there is also a magnificent assortment of plans and graphic representations of what may be called the matél’iel of sanitary and demographic science. The residue of the money subscribed for the Congress will be devoted to a foundation for the promotion ofiabriks-hygiene"—to remain as a monument of the Congress long after its immediate programme has been fulfilled. Demography, we may mention, will be represented at the Congress for the last time on this occasion, its votaries having made special arrangements with the newly organised Statistical Institute for enrolment among its members. The organising committee, as already remarked, has now issued in printed form the opening address, dealing with the twenty-two subjects set down for discussion. These in themselves constitute a formidable volume, and will enable all the members of the Congress to obtain a complete insight of each subject that is to be debated. The greater number of papers are in German, but these, for the most part, are accompanied with summaries of the main argument written in French. After German, second in number are the discourses in French, and finally there are four papers in English. The first is a report on the Purification and Utilisation of Sewage, by Dr. E. Frankland of New Reigate; the second is a short Report on the Importation of Rags, by Professor Corfield ; the third is an account of the Liws relatingto Factories and’Workshops, by Mr. F. Hayes-lVhymper; and the fourth is a paper on International Regulations tor preventing Epidemics, by Mr. Shirley F. Murphy. This latter may probably lead to a somewhat stormy debate, as it will be remembered that English ideas on quarantineA were left in a minority of two at the last Congress, held three years ago at the Hague. Among the French papers, M. Durand-Claye’s summing up of the Shone and Waring
433 solid form what up to that moment has been present only as a gas; and it is not surprising, therefore, that manymost, indeed-of the engines that have been constructed for this purpose have been liable to clog through accumulations of ice and snow. The deposition of water as a result of increased tension in water vapour. though theoretically correlative to the deposition through reduction of temperature, does not. indeed, give rise to any practical difficulty. Indeed, in practice it is somewhat in favour of the operation, for as a matter of experience great reduction of temperature is almost always accompanied by simultaneous reduction of pressure. Thus the one condition tends to promote evaporation, while THE FROZEN MEAT SUPPLY. the other is producing condensation. But it falls far short of effecting a complete compensation. Our readers will, THE enormous importance of everything which has a remember the beautiful experiment of Cailletet, alluded to. bearing upon the food supply of Great Britain gives a very above, in which hydrogen gas, after being subjected to an special interest to much of the evidence which was tendered enormous pressure and to the refrigerating influence of to Mr. Justice Stephen in the course of the long patent trial freely evaporating carbonic acid, was allowed to stream a cock into the open air. It might have been supwith which he brought his judicial labours to a close for through a priori that the relaxation of pressure, which itself posed the legal year now just ended. The subject matter of the produced the cold, would have countervailed the condensing patent in question is a refrigerating machine, and interesting effect of the cold so produced. But it was not so. In the as its theory may be as a branch of thermo-dynamics, it centre of his emergent jet of liberated gas little lumps of would have bean little but a piece of laboratory apparatus solid hydrogen formed and fell upon the floor. In the same of ice form in the expanding water vapourbut for one thing. It has been found applicable to the im- way grains when the reduction of pressure is considerable, and theseportant purpose of bringing dead meat from America, grains of ice, accumulating in the working parts of Australia, and New Zealand in a perfectly sound condition. the machine, have of course a strong tendency to block it The trade is at present in its infancy. Ten years ago, up. How strong this tendency is may be collected from thealthough experiments had been made with a view to evidence of one of the engineers, who told Mr. Justice the importation of cargoes of dead meat, they had all Stephen that "cold air machines are frequently made to deliver 1,680,000 feet per day, and this would produce about met with very indifferent success. The trouble arose out 5 cwt. of snow equal to three cubic yards in twenty-four of a very trifling circumstance. Air contains, as every- hours without taking into account evaporation from the body knows, a certain proportion of water vapour. This meat, and this on the assumption that the air taken into the is, indeed, rather a popular way of putting the fact. machine is already below freezing." It may well be supIf atmospheric air be considered to be strictly a mechanical posed that the disposal of such a quantity of solid mattermixture of oxygen and nitrogen, then of course it does not generated within the machine would in any case be a serious always and necessarily contain water. But although oxygen problem, but it is complicated by the circumstance that this. and nitrogen are often spoken of as being the principal (and maes of snow comes into existence precisely where it is most sometimes roughly as the only) ingredients ot common air, mischievous. In order to get the full refrigerating effect, it, this is hardly accurate. So long as oxygen and nitrogen is necessary to make the air do work during its expanwere regarded by physicists as " permanent gases," radically sion, and consequently it must be expanded in a closed different from condensable vapour, like steam or carbonic chamber, in a cylinder in fact. This accordingly is wher& acid, it was natural to draw a line between the gaseous and the snow is formed, and the problem of its removal in the vaporous constituents of the atmosphere. But that dis- solid form Imust be faced if once the water vapour gains. tinction holds no longer. The brilliant experiments of admission. Andrews, of Cailletet, of Pictet and others have recently Stated thus, the difficulty conveys a hint as to how it may shown that the most volatile gases are only vapours at a be evaded. All that is wanted in the expansion cylinder is temperature much above, or a pressure greatly below, satu- the permanent gas. If the water vapour can be removed ration point, and in this view it is impossible any longer to the whole difficulty is at an end. Completely to remove it deny to the omnipresent and beneficent water vapour which is not practicable, is not desirable perhaps, for it is probablepaints our sunsets and fertilises our fieldsits right to the that the desiccating action of a truly anhydrous atmosphere position of a constituent of prime importance in the terres- would have a deteriorating effect upon the meat cargo. But trial atmosphere. by the simple expedient of cooling down the entering air,, But prior to 1877 it almost seemed as if this subtle vapour before admitting it to the expansion cylinder, to a temperawould for ever shut Great Britain off from the greatest dead- ture just above 32° F., and giving it time to deposit its conmeat markets of the world. The problem was to preserve densed moisture in a form, the practical difficulty has. liquid the meat during a voyage lasting from two to five weeks, been overcome. The liquid water runs away under tb& and involving, in the case of the southern hemisphere, the action of gravity. The residual vapour, though mere] crossing of the equator. The solution was obvious-viz., still producing snow, produces so much less than if to reduce the temperature of the chamber in which the meat it had gone into the cylinder at an ordinary atmospheric was carried to a point that would arrest putrefaction. Other as to make all the difference between comtemperature raethods of antiseptic treatment had indeed been tried, but not mercial failure and commercial success. Equipped with only without success, they hadnever even offered a reasonable this contrivance, the merchant finds it as eaey to make his. prospect of success. An antiseptic dressing may do no harm way through the circumambient ocean of water vapour as. to living flesh, because the vital processes speedily eliminate to traverse the subjacent ocean of liquid water, and without foreign elements; but once lodged in the substance of dead risk or trouble to bring his inert cargo of perishable meat animal tissue, the antiseptic dressing became itself a ground for a six weeks’ voyage through the tropics. Already the of offence, and one which no subsequent treatment could boon of this great enlargement of his meat supply i wholly or satisfactorily remove. Not so, however, the treat- being felt by the British consumer. Last year it seems ment by what may,perhaps, be termed antiseptictemperature. that a million frozen carcases arrived in London from This demands no counteraction but the subsequent thaw, and New Zealand and the River Plate. In April of the leaves no ineradicable mischief behind it. This, then, was, as present year 131,000 carcases of frozen mutton wera we say, the obvious solution, and for years was only obstructed received. Thus a beginning has been made of what will by the difficulty of dealing in the refrigerator with the in- probably in the end prove to be a most important departure evitable water vapour. Unlike the so-called "permanent in the department of our food supply. gases," water vapour is alwayspresent in the atmosphere, under ordinary conditions, in such quantity as to be actually at its point of saturation. A slight increase of pressure or ACCORDING to advices from Jamaica, brought by the a slight fall of temperature suffices to some precipitate Royal Mail Company’s steamer Orinoco, small-pox has portion of this vapour. Hence the difficulty. The engine entirely disappeared from the island, but several ports cf is required suddenly to accommodate in the liquid or the Cuba are declared to be infected.
systems of drainage is certain to elicit very warm contradictions. Indeed, we already hear of various speakers who are preparing for the fray; and it must be borne in mind that the debates open on September 26th, so there is not much time to be lost. The excursions and various entertainments all seem to have been organised on a very grand scale and with much method, and the number of adherents to the Congress being unprecedentedly large, everything indicates that this gathering will be more successful than any of its predecessors.